Mother of AJ Freund gives birth in jail: report

The mother of murdered 5-year-old Andrew “AJ” Freund has given birth to a baby girl while she and her husband remain held in the McHenry County Jail, according to the Northwest Herald.

A Department of Children and Family Services source told the newspaper that JoAnn Cunningham — who, with her husband, Andrew Freund Sr., was charged with murdering the boy in April — gave birth to the child in jail on May 31. A McHenry County judge has since ordered paternity tests for two men who may have fathered the child.

The child has since been taken into DCFS custody, the source said. A spokesman for DCFS did not respond to inquiries from the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday night.

Cunningham and the elder Freund were charged with five counts of first-degree murder in connection with their 5-year-old son’s April death in Crystal Lake.

Cunningham was also hit with four counts of aggravated battery, two counts of aggravated domestic battery and one count of failure to report a missing child or child death.

Freund Sr. was charged with two counts of aggravated battery, one count of aggravated domestic battery, two counts of concealment of a homicidal death and one count of failure to report a missing child or child death.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Each were ordered held on $5 million bail. The McHenry County Coroner’s Office determined that AJ died of injuries to his skull and brain as a result of repeated blunt-force trauma.

Cunningham and Freund Sr. reported their son missing on the morning of April 18, claiming they’d last seen him while putting him to bed the night before, police said.

Local law enforcement agencies and the FBI spent the next week searching the area for Andrew until Freund provided information early Wednesday that led them to the boy’s body, which was wrapped in plastic in a shallow grave in nearby Woodstock, Crystal Lake Police Chief James Black said.

Records show the family has a lengthy history with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services after AJ was born with opiates in his system in 2013, but the boy was eventually returned and allowed to remain with the family despite allegations of neglect.

The family home on Dole Avenue was in poor condition, and the family lived without power at times. Police reports document it was full of dog feces, urine and trash and had many broken or open windows, even in the winter.

DCFS is still investigating whether there were “shortcomings” in the agency’s oversight of the boy and his family.